


Three Days of Living Hell

by AgentWashington (orphan_account)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Albino Dave, Albino Karkat, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Zombies, F/F, F/M, Humanstuck, Karkat doesn't know how to handle all this, M/M, Zombies, Zombiestuck, davekat - Freeform, they're dying left and right here, very major character death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-12-28
Updated: 2013-02-03
Packaged: 2017-11-22 17:51:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 20,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/612566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/AgentWashington
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What would you do if you awoke one day, and on this seemingly normal day, you decided to once again fake an illness and stay home alone as your father goes off to work. You'd enjoy the day off from school, right? Wrong.</p>
<p>What if I told you that this seemingly "normal" day actually turned out to be a lot less normal and a lot less... well... anything. What if I told you this day was the beginning of a zombie apocalypse, and that nearly all of your friends would die, turn into one of those things, or form their own small groups and leave you? Impossible this would never happen.</p>
<p>What if you were just trying to stay home from school due to being picked on 24-7, and you had to form a small group of all your friends to fend for yourselves? You wouldn't believe it, right? Well guess again.</p>
<p>You are Karkat Vantas and you are definitely fed up with your life turning to shit left and right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Day One

Your name is Karkat Vantas, and it's been a total of three days since the power outage hit.

Maybe it'd be easier to understand if we went back those three days to where it all began.

You don't remember much from all that's happened in the past three almost four days, but when everything went out it was like the whole universe held its breath.  
No one thought much of it, especially not you. You, yourself, had been staying home sick from school.  
This next upcoming week was going to be the week with the final tests and all that other rush bullshit you had at the end of a semester. Your Second semester to be exact.  
It was still extremely cold out, but then again it was near the middle, close to the end, of winter. There was still plenty of snow on the ground, but like hell were you going to go outside and fool around in the snow like a stupid fucking toddler.  
You were obviously staying home sick from school due to the exact reason of final tests. You were really unprepared for this shit just like you were unprepared for every other test this year so far. But, you didn't need to get bad grades TWICE in a row, and maybe fail junior year in high school.  
Actually, that's the last thing you need to happen because you've already had your best friend AND your father preach at you because of you grades.  
It's not like you didn't pay attention in school it's just the ultimate fact of not really CARING about this shit that you already learned in life.  
But, anyways, you were getting really far off topic here and you need to get back on it to explain more about why you're missing school and why you're bothering to remember this shit anyways.  
Oh yeah, you're remembering because you have nothing really better to do at this moment except sleep or something stupid.

It's a Wednesday today, that ungodly middle day of the week, and it is your third day missing school.  
You thought it'd be like the other two days; your father heading off to work as you stayed home watching romantic comedies, or fooling around on your shitty laptop. Just doing *something* to pass the slow time by.  
You didn't think much of it when you were watching a romcom on the couch just about to fall off into sleep when suddenly it got eerily dark in your house.  
Most of the time you wouldn't give stuff like this a second thought, you've always got something better to do than care about the current things happening now at this exact moment, but this really had caught your eye.

It was the middle of the day, around one o'clock in the afternoon and everything went off. All of the power. All of it.

Everything on at the moment shut off entirely. You froze immediately from where you were sitting on the couch, wide-eyed you look around the room in shock. What the hell is going on now? You briefly wonder standing up walking towards the window. Everything was fine this morning, your father went to work, your best friend, Kanaya, stopped by your house before school to give you her regards about feeling better and what not.  
But, this is utterly strange, power does not just shut off in the middle of the day with no warning at all, and it seemed like you weren't the only one baffled about what was going on, by the looks of it every house on this street went out, and what's even more strange is the silence that followed after it.

 

You held your breath, and scowled, this is positively stupid, what exactly were you doing worrying for nothing over here? The power would be back on in an hour or so, I mean, it's not snowing THAT badly to cause a power outage, hell, it's only flurrying at the moment, so what the everlasting fuck is going on here?

Sighing you shake your head for a minute wondering what you should do now, if the power is down, that might mean the internet's down, and you definitely don't feel like reading right now.

You were just about to go get a quick snack when the next thing you know your phone was beeping over on the coffee table. What now? You think rolling your eyes briefly as you pick up your phone, and go straight to the new message.

"...What the..." You mumble off reading over the text message, it was a message from your father and it definitely seemed rushed like something had happened and he had to get out of there and send a warning to you fast... that... or you're just worrying yourself about nothing again. Seriously, have to stop doing that. 

_Karkat. I want you to listen to me. I need you to stay indoors, or away from any public area, I can’t really text fast enough at this exact moment, and it’s hard when they’re all around, but something happened. Something bad. I don’t want to scare you because I love you and you are family, but I need you to listen to me for once and just don’t go anywhere you think others would go._

You blinked once. Hell, you blinked twice. You don’t really understand why your father is freaking out and telling you to stay inside and the only thing that you can notice for a fact was that your father was probably scared shitless from something, and that is very rare. You're especially confused about him wanting you to stay indoors, what’s the point of going outside when it's cold as fuck out anyways?  
You look over at the window, you're on the main floor, and the door leading to your backyard is right over there.  
The window you keep looking and peaking out of has a nice view of the front yard.

Wait.

Who the fuck is that?

You narrow your eyes as you take a few steps closer towards the window. What kind of stupid fuck would wander around in the goddamn street? You momentarily wonder if it's Gamzee, but think twice on it when realizing they don't have a big mop of unbrushed black hair on the top of their head.  
You also notice your neighbor, leaving their house across the street, glance at the person.

It's like they're both playing in slow-mo, the person in the street seems to notice your neighbor as your neighbor looks like he's going fucking camping, or something absurd.  
The person in the street seems to take a slow step towards your neighbor and then they break out into this speed walk headed straight for him, which is weird as fuck. You wonder if maybe this person is stoned, or a serial killer because they bring their hands out as if they're trying to reach for your neighbor.

You are now standing close to the window trying to get a good look at the scene happening right outside your house across the street, your neighbor seems to fly right off the handle and sprints down the street when you see another person a block or so down from where your neighbor is running, he seems to notice this too and takes a swift turn jumping a fence behind someone else’s house.

The speed-walking imbecile seems to follow after him, but is too busy being a retard clawing at the fence as if it was a brick wall. Jesus fucking christ what is wrong with everyone? You'd almost say the one repeatedly running into the god damned fence reminded you of a zombie, but you also remind yourself that zombies are as fake as magic.

You raise your eyebrows in wonder as the person just does not give up bashing themselves against that fence, your neighbor is obviously long gone by now, what with how he just had to get the fuck out of here as if this place was suddenly some shithole and he only just now realized it and had to get out of this place instantly.

You roll your eyes as you suddenly get another text message, except this time it's from Kanaya which is rare since she is always lecturing you about texting during school.

**Kanaya: Karkat Where Are You**

**Karkat: I'M OBVIOUSLY AT MY HOUSE; THE SAME GOD FORSAKEN PLACE I'VE BEEN AT FOR THE PAST THREE DAYS**

**Karkat: OH BUT YOU KNOW, I JUST DECIDED THAT OH FUCK IT NO ONE'S HOME LET ME JUST GO GRAB MY SHIT, AND GO RUN OUT OF THE HOUSE AND MAYBE BUILD A SNOWMAN OUT OF ALL THE FUCKS THAT I'M ALMOST GIVING RIGHT NOW, BUT YOU KNOW, I'M TOO GODDAMN SICK TO EVEN BOTHER.**

**Kanaya: We Both Know You Arent Sick And We Both Know That You Should Probably Be At School Right Now But You Are Most Certainly Fortunate To Be Able To Be At Your House At This Instant**

**Karkat: AND WHY WOULD I BE GRATEFUL TO BE SO BORED OUT OF MY SKULL?**

**Kanaya: Because Theyre Holding Us In Lockdown For Some Unknown Reason**

**Kanaya: Or Just For Some Reason That They Refuse To Tell Us**

**Karkat: OKAY, NOW YOU'VE JUST CONFUSED ME, WHY THE FUCK WOULD THEY PUT YOU IN LOCKDOWN BUT NOT TELL YOU THE REASON OF IT? OH GOD DAMMIT IT BETTER NOT BE BECAUSE OF THESE DUMB FUCKING UNINTELLIGENT FUCKTARDS RUNNING AROUND OUTSIDE AS IF THEY'RE KING OF THE GOD DAMNED WORLD.**

**Kanaya: Wait What**

**Karkat: THERE ARE DUMB ASSES RUNNING AROUND IN THE STREETS. THEY SCARED MY NEIGHBOR SHITLESS.**

**Kanaya: This Seems Rather Interesting I Think You May Have Figured Out The Reason Of Why Were In Emergency Lockdown**

**Kanaya: Speaking Of Rose Is Currently Trying To Find Out As Much As She Can About Whats Going On**

**Kanaya: It Would Seem That It Does Involve People Running Around**

**Karkat: WAIT, ARE YOU GUYS ACTUALLY IN LOCKDOWN WHERE YOU'RE FUCKING HIDING LIKE PRE-SCHOOLERS THAT JUST FOUND OUT LIFE WAS A LOT HARDER THAN IT LOOKED? OR ARE YOU STILL CONTINUING CLASS?**

**Kanaya: Were Allowed To Roam Around School But The Teachers Are Watching Us Like Hawks**

**Kanaya: Our Group Of Friends To Be Specific Are On The Roof Minus Rose Who Ran Off To Look For Information**

**Kanaya: It Would Seem Dave Terezi And Aradia Arent Here Though Which Makes Our Group Of Nine Shrink Down To A Low Number Of Four**

**Kanaya: Weve Also Seen A Few Of Those People you Described In The Streets Mindlessly Wandering Around But**

**Kanaya: Wait**

**Kanaya: Karkat**

**Kanaya: Are You Even Listening Anymore**

**Kanaya: Hello**

**Karkat: ASDFKSDFGHDFJGDSRGDSKWTGJSFKDHDS**

**Kanaya: What Seems To Be The Matter**

**Kanaya: Did I Say Something Wrong**

You're currently ignoring your phone and it's constant dings that you now switched to vibrate as something walks right past the window of your house. You are silently and mentally freaking the fuck out because if anything that person's face was torn, and they were completely missing their right arm.

Not that you got a good look at them anyways since you immediately ducked down. That. That looked like a zombie. And from all the video games you've played (That he isn't very good at, excuse you.) you know fully well that, that thing may not have noticed you, but it could have possibly smelled you. Which you aren't taking the chance of looking like a model in front of a store window just offering your flesh to it.

Shit, you think for a minute pushing snow white bangs up with your hands on your forehead. Shiiiiit, shit, shit, your mind constantly whispers as you peek up over the window to see if it's gone, it is, but not very far, it seemed to have wandered over a few yards and joined in on constantly slamming itself against the fence like a mindless prick.

This isn't very fun, and you are not happy that you decided to pretend to be ill all those days. Damn do you wish you were at least with a few of your friends right now, but then again you suppose you are lucky. If it really is zombies running around outside eating other people alive, tearing peoples flesh right off their bones, then that means if one student or teacher at school gets infected that means it's a goddamned domino effect.

Shit, it seems Kanaya also left you a wall of messages, you have to tell her to gather everyone and pirouette right off the goddamn roof, or do SOMETHING just get out of there.

**Karkat: KANAYA, KANAYA, STOP MINDLESSLY TEXTING HELLO'S AND SHIT. FUCKING. STOP. JUST SHUT YOUR TRAP FOR ONE SECOND.**

**Kanaya: Alright Then What Seems To Be The Matter**

**Karkat: THESE AREN'T JUST MINDLESS FUCKTARDS RUNNING AROUND ACTING LIKE PSYCHOPATHS; THESE ARE MINDLESS FLESH-EATING ZOMBIE FUCKTARDS THAT WANNA RUN AROUND AND EAT EVERYONE AND HAVE A *WONDERFUL* CORPSE PARTY!**

**Kanaya: Are You Joking With Me Or Are You Actually Telling Me The Truth Here Karkat**

**Karkat: NO, NO, NO, NO, NO. BELIEVE ME HERE I KNOW WHAT I'M SAYING AND IT PROBABLY SOUNDS BATSHIT INSANE AS IF GAMZEE GOT ME STONED OR SOMETHING, BUT NO**

**Karkat: I AM ONE-HUNDRED PERCENT TELLING YOU THE ABSOLUTE TRUTH HERE AND AM HANDING AWAY EVERY SINGLE LAST ONE OF MY FUCKS RIGHT NOW. HELL, IT'S FREE-FUCK DAY EVERYONE COME GRAB A FUCK AND PUT IT IN YOUR PILE OF FUCKS THAT YOU COULDN'T POSSIBLY CARE TO GIVE!**

**Kanaya: Are You Okay**

**Karkat: NO. NOT REALLY. ONE OF THOSE FUCKING THINGS WALKED RIGHT PAST MY WINDOW, WHICH MY FACE WAS VERY CLOSE TO THANK YOU VERY MUCH**

**Kanaya: Oh I See Then I Guess Now Would Be A Good Time To Panic About All Of This**

**Karkat: NO, THAT IS THE LAST THING I NEED FROM YOU OF ALL PEOPLE. YOU ARE THE MOST SENSIBLE ONE AND YOU DEFINITELY NEED TO GATHER EVERYONE YOU CAN AND GET THE FUCK OUT OF THERE BEFORE ONE OF YOU GETS TURNED AND I SERIOUSLY DO NOT NEED THAT AT ALL BECAUSE FUCK ME IF EVEN, OH, LET'S SAY THE INSUFFERABLE PRICK**

**Kanaya: Dave**

**Karkat: YES, STRIDER, THAT ASSHOLE, I WOULD GIVE THE TINIEST OF ALL FUCKS EVEN IF HE GOT TURNED. YOU'D HAVE TO BE A REAL COLD-BLOODED SON OF A BITCH TO NOT CARE IF EVEN THE INSUFFERABLE OF YOUR CLOSEST FRIENDS WAS TURNED INTO ONE OF THOSE MINDLESS FLESH EATING FUCKASSES.**

**Kanaya: I See Dont Worry Im Informing The Three Others That Are On The Roof With Me At The Moment And Then Ill Try To Gather Them All Up To Try And Find The Others And We Will**

**Kanaya: As You Put It**

**Kanaya: Pirouette Right Off The Roof Although That Is Most Unsafe And Would Probably Be A Very Unwise Thing To Do**

**Karkat: OBVIOUSLY, OKAY, SHIT, WE NEED A MEETING POINT, AND WE'RE OBVIOUSLY GOING TO NEED TO GET WEAPONS AND WARM CLOTHES, FOOD TOO. OH GOD DAMMIT HOW DID ANY OF THIS EVEN HAPPEN?**

**Kanaya: I Do Not Know But Itd Be Best If We All Met Up As Soon As Possible And Itd Probably Be Best For You To Find A Safer Place Other Than Your House Because None Of Us Would Make It That Far**

**KARKAT: FUCK, YOU'RE RIGHT. WE'RE GOING TO HAVE TO MEET HALFWAY. SHIT, YOU REMEMBER THE OLD PARK WE USED TO PLAY AT RIGHT? THE ONE WHERE SOLLUX PUSHED ME OFF THE FUCKING SWING SET IN ONE OF HIS BIPOLAR MOOD SWINGS WHEN WE WERE TODDLERS**

**Kanaya: Yes Im Going To Cut You Off There Since Weve Figured Out Our Meeting Place And Now Im Going To Stop Responding To Your Messages To Go Gather Everyone Up Alright**

**KARKAT: FINE. JUST STAY SAFE, OKAY?**

**Kanaya: Most Certainly And It Would Be Advised For You To Do The Same**

You would respond once more to get the last word, but you are currently too busy staying completely still as the thing from down the block peaks into the window to take a look at your house. You don't move at all and just stay extremely still; frozen in place to be specific, I mean, who would move around when they've got one of those mindless flesh eating fucktards at their window taking a look at the place. You aren't sure how long you stay still, your eyes glancing to it every so often, only to make sure that it's eyes aren't on you. And finally it must hear the imbeciles bashing against the fence repeatedly.

You're positive things are a thousand times worse with the lights off and the idiots running around tearing flesh off of living people left and right. You immediately run upstairs when it finally decides to join the idiots down the street, skipping two or three steps at a time as you go up and head off to your room. You nudge open your door the rest of the way into your sort of clean, sort of messy room.

You have clothes all over the floor although they are all closer and in a big clump near your laundry hamper in the corner of your room. Your room isn't big, but it isn't small, you've got a desk with school work and books all over it, your laptop was turned off and charging. You quickly grab your backpack and empty all the school crap that you had in it, out.

You quickly grab some clothes, your laptop seeing as it could be of use even if the power is out the internet could still be up, you grab your box of fucks... oh wait. You had none to give away, you think as you quickly get undressed out of your pajamas and pull on jeans that you wore the other day. You grab the warmest clothes that you can find, slipping on a t-shirt then a red sweater that is one size too big that makes you think it's your Dad's, but you quickly refrain from thinking about your father anymore than that. Who knows he could be one of those things already.

You grab your tennis shoes and shove them in your backpack as well, as you put on your boots that remind you a little of combat boots, another dumb thought that is slipping through your head. You don't know why you're being so observant of your room *now* of all times.

You quickly go and grab your coat and scarf hanging on the door, but slip on some of the clothes you had lying around on the floor, "Fuck," you mutter quietly, as you stand up again putting on your coat and scarf. Where the hell did my hat go? Karkat thinks as he looks around his unorganized room. Damn it he didn't feel like letting the whole world, let alone zombies see his pale skin and snow white hair. Yes, now you've got an idea of what he looks like, not that he likes the way he looks. When he was little his eyes use to be more blue, and it was obvious that he was an albino, but for some reason as Karkat got older the pinkish-blue of his eyes turned more pink, and then the blue completely faded leaving a set of unordinary red eyes. It would make him think he was way worse than he was supposed to be, and it wasn't like he was even proud of his eyes let alone his eyesight.

His friends never really questioned it as they could tell, and you've probably only told Kanaya about how you felt about all of this, and it doesn't help the fact that the insufferable douchebag and his shades that seem to be glued to his face would always point out the features that made you different from just being a normal person. No, you had to be the outcast, no fuck, you were the outcast of the outcasts, it was bad enough being an albino, but an albino with unnaturally bright red eyes instead of blue? You've got to be fucking kidding him. You mean, sure, some albinos have red eyes, but they aren't usually as bright as yours due to the pigmentation in their eyes.

Okay, Karkat sighs clearing his thoughts off this as he looks at the mirror in his room only to look away from it quickly, shit, where's that hat? He remembers putting it with the rest of his winter clothes, especially since it matches his scarf. He really needs that hat.

Although, it might not even matter anymore since zombies are running around, but it always gave him a sense of comfort hiding his hair in that hat. He'll have to get a new one, or find it later because right now he's wasting time. Karkat grabs the backpack slinging it on his shoulder as he heads downstairs again picking up his phone that he dropped. He seemed to have two messages in his inbox, but he's way too busy looking for his hat or some sort of weapon to use.

...Of course his dad isn't going to have any guns, or anything he NEEDS when there's a zombie apocalypse happening, and it doesn't help the fact that it's almost two thirty in the afternoon and it's dark as shit in his house.

Great. No weapons, he thinks to himself facepalming at this as he checks his messages, oh lovely, one message from the insufferable prick which you refuse to answer right now, and a few from Sollux. He refuses to answer either of them at the moment as he tries to think of everyday items, or old things he used to use, or just ANYTHING as a weapon. When it hits him, not really, but he remembers his dad saying he used to play baseball when he was Karkat's age, and that he kept the baseball bat somewhere around the house. God does he wish he'd stop thinking about his father and man does he wish he'd listen more to his father's stories of pure mind boggling fuddlery.

Closing his backpack all the way, so his shit doesn't fall out all over the place, he goes into the garage and looks around at all the junk his father kept from when he was younger. Looking at some of this stuff makes him think of his mother, but he does well in forgetting that quickly upon seeing the old metal baseball bat. The thing looks like it could fall apart at any second, but right now it's the best thing he's got. (Plus, it reminds him of his father a bit, but he would never admit that.)

On the way back into the main room of his house, the living room that connects to the kitchen to be exact, he stopped dead in his steps. Karkat is positive he saw something in the street just now that didn't look dead. That, and the dead that were around his house and around his neighbors houses started to follow them.

Wait... Is that.... He goes closer to the window squinting his eyes to get a better look at the three, one looked a lot like the insufferable prick and his sidekick, and the other one... looked a lot like Terezi. Why would she follow those two? Ugh. Just great they've got a blind person with them. And he's most certain that's them. You don't know if you should follow them, or get started on your hike to the park a few ways away from here, but you're quite certain that they're going to be doing something important. Maybe follow them for a little while? Then head back? Seems like the best thing to do.

Upon leaving your house you notice just how fast they're running, Terezi has her hand linked with Aradia's so she doesn't get lost, and Aradia is right on Dave's heels as they all stop running and crash into each other because of you hitting your baseball bat right into lifeless flesh creating this huge _THWACK!_

You don't have your hat on and they probably can tell it's you, hell, maybe they didn't know you lived around here, but that's not your problem, your problem is that you've got these lifeless shitheads all around your yard, and now they're all turning to get a look at where that noise came from. You've just about had it with these fuckers when one of them lunges at you. You do your best to stay on your toes, continuing to stay as light as a feather as you hit this one in the side of the head as hard as you can.

...Okay, ew, you just got blood on you, okay, this is gross, you think scowling your famous scowl as you hit another one, and then bolt over to the others. They seem to be fine for the most part you think aside from the fact that they are all trying to catch their breath while they try to fight off two of these pricks. Your bat most likely isn't going to be able to kill them, but you can daze the fuck out of the dead, or try to. You run up to the others quickly and smash your baseball bat into the fucker's head that was trying to bite Terezi.

"Okay, wow." Dave says as he kicks the zombie that was trying to get him in the gut, and then doing that again, except this time he's managed to pin it on the ground with his foot as he looks at you eyeing your bat and then holding his hand out in a way that makes you think 'gimme gimme' and you groan.

"No, go get your own fucking baseball bat you prick." Karkat hisses out and you think you see Dave roll his eyes under his shades.

"No, I need the god damned bat because unlike you I know what I'm doing. And I'm going to bash this thing's skull in."

"You know what, no, screw you, you three would be more food for these things if it weren't for me!" You are just about to start yelling and start one of yours and Dave's famous arguments, but you soon notice the zombies behind you are now catching up, and you all are just sitting ducks.

You hand Dave the bat and grumble upon doing so. "Thank you," He manages out in mock appreciation his lips turning upward in a fake smile for about one second to make you think you're seeing things, and next thing you know the zombie he had pinned with his foot is now headless. How the fuck did he do that with a bat? You scowl.

"C'mon Coolkid!" Terezi cackles, "We have to go get the others!" She's grinning as usual, you guess no matter what happens that grin won't really ever fade away. You bite your lip unknowingly at this thought.

"Damn straight we've got to get to the others; they're as helpless as us just standing here waiting for those slow lifeless zombies to get a taste of this fine piece of Strider." You roll your eyes, and Aradia just punches Dave in the arm.

"Come on, we really have no time for this," And to make her point clear she's already started walking away tugging Terezi along with her, you momentarily wonder why Terezi needs a guide when she has her cane, but you then realize that might be because they're running instead of taking their time to let the zombies come up and have a nice afternoon chat with them.

"We've got all the time in the world." Strider remarks, as Terezi joins in after saying, 'All of the time, all of it!' and you wonder how Aradia got stuck with these two in the first place. It's like she's a babysitter for them.

"So, are we dragging along Mister Grumpypants here?" Strider says and you frown.

"No, I'm coming along because I don't want you asswipes getting killed, and I'm also the one that has to drag you fools with me to the park."

"The park?" Now they're looking at you as you walk past them faster. You hear the moans and groans of the zombies behind you, and they're going to catch up soon if you don't get a move on.

"Yes, we're meeting the others there," You begin to start to say, but Dave cuts you off. "We," He motions at the three of them, "Are going to go save the derp squad at their impossibly rich private school." And to make a point he walks faster than you, hell, he walks faster than the others beginning to lead them again.

"Well, I'm coming along anyways because I've got to make sure you dumbfucks don't get killed out here." You huff crossing your arms. Now you don't even have your bat, Strider basically flaunts it around to prove your point of not having it.

You see a smirk tug at the prick's lips, "Alright, then do whatever you want Crabbycat, but don't leave your blood on our hands." You hiss at the nickname he gives you and Terezi cackles even more as you all make your way to that private school that is a few blocks away from your neighborhood.

By the time you get anywhere close to it, the zombie amount begins to increase and soon you're split-up, Terezi and Aradia had to take another way while you and Dave got stuck behind a team of undead. You roll your eyes as Dave manages to smack off another zombie head like a baseball, and you're left using your fists and feet. Of course you know how to fight, you aren't helpless, and you've had enough physical fights with this prick here to know you're a pretty good fighter.

Hell, both of you are good fighters, but not the best, you think as you manage to sidestep another zombie only to back up into one. Your eyes go wide as it's about to bite you, but then it's head is then bashed in by the side of your father's baseball bat. Dave is smirking now, and you grimace at how close the bat was to hitting *your* head.

"Damn it, you just had to take *my* bat, didn't you? Why can't you just go find your own and give me mine back?" You manage to say as you slam your fist right into the jaw of something incredibly lifeless and you bite back your look of pure disgust as it staggers back from the pressure of the blow, and goes at you again. Dave makes a point in using the bat and slams it into the stomach of the zombie you just hit.

"Well, one, because there is no other place I can get a bat, two, I'm way better at this than you." You growl and manage out a mutter of cuss words as you both get out of this zombiefest, and up to the private school's gates, Gold Obsidian, who names a school that? You don't even know, but you shake the gates once, twice even, but it's obvious they're locked. With the students in the building. This is really stupid you think because it can turn out to be one huge domino-effect in there.

And you think you're right about the domino effect because your eyes widen at the sight of some of the students trying to claw their way into a door at the side part of the building. The zombies behind you are now trying to lunge at you, and one just about gets Dave, but thanks to your foot meeting its gut you manage to stop that. The last thing you need is this insufferable pricks death on your hands.

That's when you see someone sneak around the right side of the school, no, two someone’s it's Aradia and Terezi and how they got in is a mystery to you and-- "Hey! What the fuck do you think you're doing!" You manage out flailing as Strider tries to pull you up, he's balancing on the top of the metal fence like an acrobat and he's currently pulling you up and over. But, this fails miserably as you both fall to the ground.

"I was saving your ass, look." You do look, and at the gate where you were just standing zombies have taken your place. You shudder and he offers a hand out to help you up, but you smack it away standing up on your own.

Strider scoffs, and turns his gaze to where Aradia and Terezi just were. They're too far away for you to help, but they're both currently kicking ass. Terezi found another use of her cane, and it seems it broke in half, and she's now using both halves as weapons bashing and stabbing zombies with the sharp parts. You see Aradia struggling a bit more, but she stays close (not too close for fear of being hit and stabbed by Terezi and her blind fury.) to Terezi also having to avoid some of the girl's attacks that don't quite make it to the lifeless flesh.

Next thing you know you're being dragged along by Strider as he dropkicks a zombie that was about to bite one of you. You're both using your feet a lot more than your fists due to not wanting to get bitten in the arm or something by the zombies. You then realize what they're all wearing, the zombies that were turned in here look like they nearly got frostbite, and you watch as Terezi takes another step forward to hit a zombie when she slips on black ice. Fuck, you nearly forgot about the weather.

You avoid the ice, and some of the snow piles, as a few of the zombies that are now about to bite Terezi because of her vulnerable state have you running over there quickly, trying your best not to slip on the ice, you take your backpack in a last resort thing and fling it at the one zombie's face that is about to take a liking to Terezi's shoulder.  
You begin to use the moves you've learned over the years of fighting Strider and other pricks, and perform a back kick on the zombie that thought you'd be a good thing to eat. If anything you probably taste horrible.

Strider is currently fighting off zombies with your bat, and Aradia is getting the rest as you help Terezi up, "You alright, Terezi?" You manage out trying not to sound too worried.

She scowls slightly, but then smiles at you, strangely looking you straight in the eyes even though she's blind, "I'm find Vantas! What do you think I'd go down so quickly? Don't doubt me!" She grins and you help her stand up as Aradia and Strider team up on this one last zombie.

After that mini-war of on-going student zombies you begin to wonder if any of the ones in the school are safe, you peak in the front doors, but then decide against it seeing a few more undead, and walk over to the side door where the zombies were clawing at. Aradia opens it and enters, you all wait a few seconds out there, but she peeks her head out again telling you three it's safe. She begins to guide Terezi again as you and Dave fall in step behind them.

This is a small hallway and it looks like hell broke loose, lockers are bent a little in some weird ways, and blood covers a lot of places. You hold your nose as the smell of putrid dead wafts through this place. It's not like the smell the zombies have (not that, that doesn't stink, it smells horrible.) but it's very disturbing and smells like someone left things out to rot, or just a dead animal smell. It's extremely disgusting. You realize the others all smelled it; Dave is forcing his poker face trying not to let the smell get to him, Aradia gags, and Terezi immediately slaps her hands over her mouth and nose.

Upon walking a few steps down the hall you hear a blood-curdling scream that grabs all of your attention, you all run down the hall making a swift left to see a girl get bitten right in the arm. The two look incredibly familiar and it seems like you aren't the only one that knows they look familiars, Aradia chokes on air, and sputters out incoherent names. It sounded like you heard a 'ri' in there and the one biting the girl has this obnoxious purple streak in their hair. The girl getting gnawed to death locks eyes with Aradia, and you watch as Aradia goes up and back kicks the zombie-guy into next week. ...Or, really... into the wall.

She leans down and she looks so close to tears as she lifts the girl's chin up to meet her face, Aradia coos and tries to calm her down telling her it's all alright, she's going to be fine... We all know these are lies. But, you guess it comforts the girl.  
You watch this go on as the two behind you go off somewhere. You walk up to Aradia and the now somehow peaceful looking dead girl, "Who was she?" You manage to get out as Aradia swiftly turns her head to look up at you then back at the girl.

"Feferi..." She manages out, and looks to the boy-zombie that is now struggling to stand up on his own, "...Eridan..." You feel yourself frown out, you've definitely heard of the girl, and... You look over at Eridan. Sollux always complained about a 'ED' you feel like that is probably the douchefuck right there. "...Come on." You say tugging Aradia up to her feet, but she stops what she's doing and tells you to look away.

You oblige.

As you hear a gruesome noise come from over where Aradia was by Feferi, and then you see a silhouette of Aradia go over to Eridan and hear another gross noise of something meeting flesh. She tugs on your arm in a few seconds, and you turn around to see blood strangely running from the side of both of their heads. The Zombie-Eridan isn't moving around anymore and you're guessing she got something to puncture the head/brain. 

"Where's Terezi and Dave?" She asks gingerly as if she doesn't even want to speak right now, you retort that you have no fucking clue where they went. She sighs, "They probably went off to find anyone else. Mainly John or Jade." You raise both of your eyebrows. You know the both of them, mainly Jade, you don't particularly like John, but he's alright you suppose.

"They go to this posh looking school, seriously? I thought Strider was joking about that..." You huff looking around the place in distaste. And it isn't just the fact that blood is in a lot of places. Along the floor, the walls. It's a madhouse here. And you definitely do not want to stay in here any longer. You facepalm when you realize you left your backpack out there in front of the school during your little battle. You make a mental note to get it later.

You feel your phone vibrate and decide now it a good time to look at your inbox as Aradia leads you away from this hallway.

A message from Dave still, two from Sollux, and one from Kanaya now.

**Kanaya: I Managed To Find The Others With The Exception Of Dave Aradia And Terezi Were All Leaving Now Out The Side Doors That The Teachers Were Careless To Leave Unguarded**

You reply to her quickly.

**Karkat: BE CAREFUL, AND DON'T WORRY. I FOUND THOSE THREE, AND I'M WITH ARADIA NOW. TEREZI AND DAVE RAN OFF SOMEWHERE LIKE THE JERKWADS THEY ARE. WE'RE AT THAT RICH PRIVATE SCHOOL. THE PLACE IS A GOD DAMNED MADHOUSE AND IT'S LIKE EVERYONE JUST WENT NUTS. IF PEOPLE ARE STILL HERE, LIKE ONE WAS, THAT ARADIA AND I JUST SAW GOT EATEN I'LL TELL YOU THAT BIT LATER**

**Kanaya: Okay Then**

**Karkat: BUT, WE'RE LOOKING FOR THOSE TWO DERPY FUCKERS. JADE AND JOHN, OR DAVE AND TEREZI ARE. I THINK ARADIA AND I ARE GOING TO LOOK FOR ANYONE ELSE, AND PROBABLY KEEP OUR EYE OUT FOR JUST ABOUT ANYONE I GUESS. LOOK I'LL HAVE TO TALK TO YOU LATER. BYE KANAYA I'LL SEE YOU AT THE PARK HOPEFULLY SOON.**

**Kanaya: Stay Safe**

You see her last text message before you move on to look at the others, you delete Dave's message feeling it's unnecessary to look at since it was from a couple hours ago before this hell started. You go to look and reply to Sollux's message.

**Sollux: 2up kk hey yo kk kk**

**Sollux: kk, ugh, whatever you're probably bu2y riight now, but ju2t 2o you know you're a douche for 2kiippiing 2chool and leaviing u2 all here and then telliing u2 that there are zombiie2 and 2hiit now. ii hope you know ii'm not enjoyiing thii2. followiing kn around liike 2he'2 leader or 2omethiing ab2urd.**

Suddenly your phone vibrates again and you get another message from him as Aradia leads you around a corner you glance up only hearing the sounds of your faint breathing and your feet. This place is eerily quiet.

**Sollux: al2o try your be2t not two get eaten.**

**Karkat: YEAH, THANKS FOR THE REASSURANCE. YOU ARE *SO* AWESOME FOR THAT.**

**Sollux: no problem**

**Karkat: IT WAS SARCASM FUCKMUNCH, AND ANYWAYS STAY WITH KANAYA. I'VE ALSO GOT BAD NEWS TO TELL YOU, BUT THAT'S FOR LATER. JUST GET KANAYA TO FILL YOU IN BECAUSE I REALLY HAVE NO TIME FOR THIS. IT'S SO QUIET HERE IT'S GIVING ME GOOSEBUMPS. IT IS NOT A NATURAL QUIET.**

**Sollux: keep your eye2 open a zombiie could pop up out of ab2olutely nowhere**

**Karkat: YOU DON'T BELIEVE THIS DO YOU?**

**Sollux: not a chance**

**Karkat: UGHHHSADFJS. JUST. TRUST ME ON THIS, OKAY? I BELIEVE WHAT I SEE AND I THINK YOU DO TOO. AND FOR ONCE YOU NEED TO JUST NOT BE A DOUCHEBAG AND JUST BELIEVE IN WHAT I SAY.**

**Sollux: alriight bro, go nut2 on tho2e zombiie2 or whatever. look ii gotta go and ii thiink you do two.**

**Karkat: YEAH, WE CAN TALK WHEN WE MEET UP.**

You don't get anymore replies for the next minute or two, and you decide to put your phone away for the time being. Aradia and you begin to climb upstairs as it's obvious nothing is on the first floor anymore. That doesn't help the fact that it's still incredibly quiet. Who knows maybe you'll be able to hear Dave and Terezi walking around at this point. That's just how quiet it is at this moment.

Every squeak and little noise grabs both of your attention, and at this point you're getting fed up with this. It's extremely annoying trying to just focus on finding someone when it's too quiet to even hear if this place is infested with zombies, or abandoned. You really hope Terezi and Dave didn't leave without you and Aradia. At this point... you're beginning to wonder if that may be true...

You shake your head clearing your thoughts, and Aradia looks back at you then points at a door that is opened a crack. Every other door in the building has been either opened entirely, left open a bit, or entirely closed. Some were even locked. This door looks ajar though, so maybe Aradia is on to something.

She heads to it, and none to gently shoves the door open with all her force. It's obvious the door is blocked by something, so you help her and shove your shoulder against it. It seems there are other people on the other side of it, and suddenly the door is nearly slammed shut.

"Hey jerk offs! Stop trying to shove us out!" You yell as the door nearly gets shut on your toe again, and then Aradia huffs and you both try to shove more.

The people on the other side stop trying to shut the door upon hearing your voice, and you both nearly fall into the room after losing balance of putting pressure on a door that is unblocked now.

You look up after catching yourself before you fell and hit your face on the ground, and you look up. You see a really buff looking guy and a girl on his back. The guy eyes you suspiciously, and then turns his gaze on Aradia, you try to get a better look at the girl on his back...

"Nepeta?!" You yell out in pure shock at this. You had no idea that the school she always talked to you about on Trollian was this rich private school...

"Karkitten!" She squeals in joy climbing off who you're pretty sure is Equius, and pounces on you, "I haven't seen you in furever! And those monsters I thought they would've certainly gotten you befur I could try to get to you!" Nepeta is currently babbling nonsense now with cat puns and you're currently being hugged to death. You think you would've stood a better chance against the zombies than her.

Equius has to pull her off of you, and you then begin to sense the tension in the air.

"...Equius." Aradia begins. You see her narrow her eyes and make a look of, 'I am so done with this world's shit.'

"Aradia." He replies back as if the name's were obvious to everyone and anyone. It's really obvious these two have a bad past.

"Well then, Karkat, we better go find Dave and Terezi. You two can tag along since you're both considered friends." On the word friends she looks pointedly at Equius, and you can't tell if he rolled his eyes or anything. What is with these douchebags wearing shades nowadays? 'Cept his are broken as if someone stepped on them that, or actually they're scratched up a bit as if they've gone through hell and back.

As you two, Aradia and you, go to walk out the door Nepeta speaks before you can leave, "Wait! I'm puretty sure there are a few others around here. I think we pawsibly saw, Feferi and Eridan around here somewhere!" Aradia flinches and Nepeta's voice wavers because I think she understood the flinch pretty well, "Well, there's still Jade-"

"And John, and the rest of our furrends. Yes. We know." The addition of a cat pun in your sentence when cutting her off gets her to smile, "I'm pretty sure that John, Jade, and whoever the hell else is all still here. Anyone else that isn't here is probably already gone off somewhere and that leaves us to find those asswipes." You huff crossing your arms walking out of the room with the others right behind you.

You're positive Dave and Terezi found John, and mayhaps Jade as well. Jade and John probably have a few others tagging along with them, but you don't know whether to believe that or not. Well, it's best not to just stand here fuckass, you think to yourself and begin walking.

"I doubt anyone else is on this floor..." Equius speaks up as you were about to head away from the stairs.

"Are you sure?" Aradia says giving him a look.

"Pawsitive!" Nepeta chirps and we change our direction to upstairs again.

Upstairs is less quiet than the main floor and the second floor combined. You here a groan down the hall to the left and decide not to head that way, you continue to walk until you come to a dead end with two turns. You briefly wonder how big this school is, but soon after dismiss the thought continuing to walk. This time you take a left turn, and you tell Nepeta and Equius to take the right turn.

"If you see any undead," You begin, "Then just retrace your steps back to here and we'll all try to meet up as soon as possible got that?" They both nod their heads and walk down the right hall.

"Do you think this is a good idea? Splitting up? I mean, something could happen to them. Something could've happened to Dave and Terezi too..." Sighing you walk left with her following after you.

"They'll be fine; They *are* fine. Nothing happened to either one of the two that we split up from. If anything Dave found John, Jade, and whoever else may be with them. We've got a pretty big group now if you count us four and then those two. And then if we add Nepeta and Equius in this group it's huge. Now continue adding it all up to the others that are headed to the park where we're all going to meet up, you've got this gigantic group of idiotic teenagers."

She blinks. You blink. Damn, you just mini-ranted, but you see a small smile form on Aradia's face when you glance back at her as you both continue to walk in silence... or... near silence. You hear a bunch of cuss words suddenly coming up from this door that says it leads to the roof. You actually hear quite a few footsteps.

Aradia pushes you through the door, moves past you, and runs up the stairs. She slams open the door, and you're right on her heels. Outside on this flat patch of the school roof you see the following people... John, Jade, Dave, Vriska, Terezi, some guy standing next to Jade, a few zombies are actually up here, about one or two, you see some girl with blonde hair crying about one of the zombies. You're pretty sure she's crying about the girl zombie with short black hair. And... Wait. No, what is Dave doing?

You walk over to Dave who's leaning down next to Terezi, she's bleeding from her leg. You instantly blame Strider. "God dammit, Dave!" You push him out of the way and for once you actually see his face tugged down into a frown.

"It's nice to see you too, Kittycat. But now isn't the time..." He trails his sentence off as you feel a few of their eyes on you.

"Was she bit? What happened, are you alright, Terezi?" You bombard her with questions as the others can't decide whether to kill the two zombies, or not. You glance over at the girl crying, she looks awfully a lot like Rose now that you think about it, but her hair is about shoulder length.

"No, I wasn't bit. I'm fine, Karkat, chill out. I only got my leg cut on something."

Dave scoffs, "Something would be that sharp ass edge of a locker downstairs."

Terezi frowns and crosses her arms going to stand up, Aradia comes over and helps her stand up as you then look at the group of people.

"Okay, who are those two zombies, and state your names." You say aloud and everyone's eyes are on you.

You look at them all, "Okay, wait, I'll name you all off, if I don't say your name then fuck you I don't know you." You begin to count them all up pointing at each one naming them off. Vriska, who rolls her eyes at you and asks who died and made you leader? John, who smiles nervously and glances at the two zombies. Jade who says the boy next to her whose actually now trying to cheer up the girl is Jake, and that the girl is Roxy. Jake is Jade's cousin she says and Roxy is Rose's sister. You nod and look around when you realize Equius and Nepeta are up here now.

"The one zombie..." Roxy chokes on a sob pointing at the girl with short black hair that has now taken a fancy to Vriska and is currently trying to gnaw on her face as Vriska sneers and pushes her away with a crowbar, "That was Ja-Janey." She becomes a sobbing mess as Jake helps her stand up and they walk over next to Jade. The Jade and Jake derps are currently trying to cheer her up and make her smile. It isn't working well.

And it started snowing again. Why are you all on the roof again? Oh yeah because those idiots thought it'd be good to go out on the roof in the middle, close to the end, of winter. Real smart.  
The snow is gathering again and you get a handful; enough to make a snowball, and throw it right at the other zombies face. No one knows who this one is thankfully. But, according to the others it got Jane when she was unexpected and they have yet to kill it?

You look towards Vriska she's obviously dying to kill them both, she's swinging the crowbar around in impatience. It's time for these zombies to die.

"Vriska." You say no one is really paying attention, but every time someone speaks it grabs a tiny bit of their attention. She looks towards you.

"What, Kaaaaaaaarkat?" You glare at her for holding out the a in kar, in your name for way too long.

You motion with your eyes at the zombie, and she seems to understand because she grins runs up to the zombie that no one knows who it is and slams the crooked edge of the crowbar right into its skull. You blink. Yeah, she's definitely been waiting to use that thing, you think to yourself as this grabs everyone's attention. Roxy wipes her face and stands up, staggering a little bit, but she manages as she goes out the door leading downstairs and sits on the steps. Jade and Jake follow suit.

You realize while you were watching Roxy, Jake, and Jade leave Vriska worked her way over to the Jane zombie. You see her grimace as she pins her on the fence that's blocking anyone from falling off the roof.

You think you even hear her mutter something like, "Sorry for this Jane...." as she shoves the crowbar straight in Jane's forehead, and then pull it out. She's now looking at the crowbar in disgust and drops it. You also watch as Dave picks it up gingerly his face as pale as a ghost.

You are now rewarded with your metal baseball bat. Yay. Back to square one of completely stupid fucking weapons to use. If anything you would like a scythe. Not the grim reaper scythe, but the one's that are smaller. Oh fuck it you are not explaining this to yourself. You already know this anyways. You hate your thoughts sometimes.

And this is also the time you realize the sun is setting. Oh fuck, no. This isn't good. No one is going to want to run around at night when you can't see anything. That's it. You all have to leave now. No ands and buts about it.

"Guys. Hey imbeciles," That gets their attention even the three that are on the steps are peaking up from the stairs, "The sun is setting. We have to go. *Now.*"

"What, why?" John tilts his head in confusion.

"Well, this school isn't safe."

"Nowhere is safe, bro." Dave says twirling the still-covered-in-blood-crowbar around as you scowl.

"Yeah, well I have a group of people that are waiting for us. We need to go before it's nighttime out and we're all fucked."

"Who’s watining for us? ...Waiting." Roxy asks from the steps, is she drunk, or can she just not pronounce these things at first? You think both.

"Kanaya, Rose, Sollux, the rest. Whoever the hell Kanaya finds along the way as well. I didn't know we'd have this many people when we came here."

"Well, I'm okay with this. It is best to leave now if we wanna get a head start before night." Aradia says helping Terezi stand up and Terezi nods along in agreement as she grins.

"I'm alright with this!" John chirps and Vriska flips her long hair back.

"Weeeeeeeell..." Vriska starts off and smirks, "You would all probably die if I didn't tag along as well." Daves snorts.

"Yeah, you think about that princess, and tell me where that line will get you when you're the one that's dead."

"Oh as if you can do much better Daaaaaaaave." She puts her hands on her hips and John is laughing. You can almost think that none of this undead stuff is happening and that there isn't two dead bodies over there, and that you're all just stupidly out on this roof, you and the others that go to your school are visiting, you're doing extra activities... But, you're broken out of that peaceful fantasy as you realize that they're all wasting time.

"Alright, alright, shut your fucking mouths we need to go." You make your point by walking to the door, past the three sitting on the steps, and down you go. The others are definitely following you now. You wonder briefly if none of them know where the old park next to the forest in your town is.

That's when you realize you're wrong because for some reason a lot of them are cheered up, or okay with what's going on at the moment. Or maybe they've just given up, John and Vriska seem to know where it is because by the time you're down to the main floor everyone's chatting quietly. You however stay silent. You have nothing to talk about right now.

That is until you're at the back of the group walking a little slowly as Strider joins you, "Sup, kittycat." He says casually the crowbar somehow defying gravity as it hangs from his belt strap on his pants. (No you were not just looking at his pants, what is wrong with you? You were looking at the crowbar that is still quite disgustingly covered in Jane's brain blood. And oh god you're grimacing now.)

You see from the corner of your eye Strider raises an eyebrow, "What're you looking at?" You scowl and roll your eyes.

"The crowbar."

He waggles his eyebrows, "Oh really? Is that all?"

"Oh my god, no, shut the fuck up. Do not start with me." You feel yourself flushing a little from embarrassment at what he was probably thinking.

"You're blushing, you know that, right grumpy cat?" You hiss and shove him hard in the arm and he nearly loses balance. For a second you're sure you see an amused look on his face, but it quickly disappears and dissolves into a mischievous smirk.

"Aradia, help, the crabby cat pushed me, I think he might've broken my arm with the force that he used." You hear Aradia whose ahead of you both snort at this.

"Oh I'm sure he did. And I refuse to help."

"Oh god, now one of my best bros won't even help me, egderp!"

"No way, Dave! Karkat's your problem!!" You hear John laughing from the front of the group as you all file out from where you entered on the side door. Dave is about to say something else when you wander away from the group now that you're out front again.

You quickly snatch up your backpack and throw it over your shoulders. You feel a few eyes flicker over at you from the group that is now staring at the fence and the shit ton of zombies that have gathered there. You have no idea how you're all going to leave or why a bunch of them started appearing. But, you've got a bad feeling about all of this.

As you look over at the group, which they honestly look a little blurry to you considering how bad your eyesight is when the sun begins changing positions; you kinda wish you brought sunglasses to block out the sunset, or the bright fluorescent light starting to come on to light up the night. That, or your glasses, you can see quite good for someone like you, but it sometimes falters when the sun sets or rises which really aggravates you.

You realize a few people in the small group you've gathered together is backing up. You see that Jake person, Jade's cousin as you recall, lean over and whisper something to her, and then back away right into Strider and tell him something too. You raise your brow at this, but you also begin to wonder why the group is backing up... that is... until you hear the big groan the fence is making. It's a metal fence and it's sort of like one of those rolling fences where it's bars and shit. It's currently locked.  
You suppose you all would've jumped the gate already if there wasn't such a large amount of zombies moaning and also groaning at you. You can smell the rotting flesh fifty times worse from earlier. And you even flinch a little looking at all of the snapping jaws, somewhat familiar faces, oh look isn't that your neighbor himself right there? You did wonder if the bastard ever got away. You suppose he was unsuccessful.

You look, or try to in this case, get a better look at them and realize how stupid you are for trying to do that because you shudder when you seeing a crawling torso behind a large group, hell, the large group of them are even stepping on it to get closer to all of you. The gate is also leaning, or maybe your vision is just bad? Another large groan from the fence answers the question for you. They're going to break the fence. Very soon.

Your mind immediately screams, ABORT MISSION, THEY'RE AT THE FRONT FUCKING GATE YOU DUMB SHIT FOR BRAINS IMBECILE; ABORT, FIND ANOTHER WAY, GO, GO, GO! And you immediately turn on your heel, but not before you tell them all.

"HEY IDIOTS, IF YOU WANNA GET EATEN THEN STAY, BUT IF YOU'RE A SANE ONE LIKE ME LET'S GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE. _NOW!_ " You're practically screeching that as you high tail it the hell out of there, you hear the stomping and thudding of a few feet, and you even see Vriska, Nepeta, Aradia, and Dave with a Terezi on his back now run fast as fuck by you. Guess you aren't the only one who wants to keep living. You also realize that the derps are behind you, Jade helping Roxy, but you notice a lack of two as you run.

You turn around briefly your eyes widening as John then peeks his head back to see what you saw, and at the loud noise of the gate groaning and then a few snaps that you're sure are the screws and bolts breaking from the pressure, and the gate falls down smashing to the ground.  
You stare nearly frozen as everyone looks back from your group and then keeps on running as a tidal wave of undead is unleashed upon you. It then hits you that the two missing ones were Equius and Jake and you see Jake, he has double pistols, you briefly wonder where the fuck he even got them, but either he's a crack-shot or he's just really fucking good with guns. He's so far hit every zombie square in the head that's come close to him, or close to biting Equius who is actually smashing his fists right into their skulls.

You wanna yell a warning back at them that they aren't going to make it, Jake's going to run out of bullets, Equius is going to get bitten, just that _something_ is going to go wrong and their blood is most definitely going to be on * _your_ * hands. You hear a strangled scream, and wonder whose it is before you realize that it's you screaming, and the undead seems to over flood Equius until all you see is rotting flesh and limbs. You scream until your throat starts to hurt, and Jake is running shooting at them, avoiding them.  
You scream until you can't anymore, and it's all playing in slow motion, as you watch one zombie get Jake from behind. You try to scream even more when its teeth sink into his flesh, and then more of them join that one, you continue to try to scream as you feel someone tugging on your arm.  
You try to scream even more as you think it's a zombie tugging at your arm trying to rip it off to eat _your_ flesh, but it's really just John dragging you along as you watch their deaths before you.  
Jake is over flooded now too, and you see a few stragglers following after you, and how you're just holding everyone up, but then you realize as you're being tugged away from the mess, the zombies, and the death that everyone is gone with the exception of you and John.

Your head hurts, and you probably have a migraine, no, scratch that. Your head hurts as if a hammer is being whacked on your forehead at the same time as your very own heartbeat. You don't realize your own hand rise and hold your forehead in the spot it hurts as you squeeze your eyes shut, tug your arm back from John, and turn around on your heel facing him, you feel something wet on your cheeks and your eyes are blurry as you open them and John looks at you sadly and you wonder why he isn't crying. He knew them better than you, hell, he was probably great friends with Jake, or maybe Equius, you don't really know as he begins to run as you hear the limping, running, speed-walking, walking footsteps behind you.

You don't even turn around as you run faster than John and see Aradia standing near what you are guessing is the place where the even richer students sleep. The dorm rooms. Dorm house? Dorm something you can't even think straight right now with your head pounding, your vision blurry, and the two deaths replaying over and over in your mind as you bolt right in the room. John follows after you then Aradia enters and shuts the door locking it. You look around the room and see everyone still slightly panting. You can't hear anything. You all hear a loud dinging and static, you see Nepeta crying in Jade's arms as Jade and Roxy are both heart torn at witnessing that. It's probably the last thing they expected to happen after such a recent death of their friend, Jane.

You see Strider and Aradia, Terezi now huddled over with Vriska murmuring something. Vriska is probably telling her what happened. You can't speak. Your voice hurts too much. You can't hear because of the static, and you can't focus because of the pounding of your head.

They're talking now, Strider is quirking an eyebrow at you, and Aradia's face has tears rolling down them for the second, or maybe third? Or fourth? Or how many times she's cried during this nightmare. Her brows are furrowed in worry as she asks you something. You waver and something the whole floor is spinning, your vision is swimming and it's like you're underwater and the pressure from the water has made your ears pop and you're just hearing ringing and static. It makes your head hurt worse.

Suddenly your head meets the floor? Or, did someone catch you? The floor feels a lot softer than you thought. You're pretty sure someone caught you. You don't know, you can't remember, what's going on at this point as you feel a faint vibrating in your coat pocket. Why would your pocket vibrate? You don't know. You try to open your eyes, but you can't your head stills hurts incredibly bad, and you feel yourself pass out. You're sure you heard something over the static a few yells of shock? Surprise? You can't even tell anymore as your mind shuts off completely and the last thing you remember is being shrouded in darkness.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 2 is here (sorry for the wait takes awhile to write 9k-10k words) I hope you all enjoy it!
> 
> Can't really say anything here without spoiling things other than that Karkat wakes up, yes! (sorry for the scare i may or may not have given you last chapter.)
> 
> ((gomen for any ooc if there is any >>;; it was completely unintentional if you do notice oocness **and yes i ship davearadia **ASMOIRAILS** if it isn't obvious**))

You don't remember passing out, and you don't remember waking up, not like you'd want to even open your eyes right now you've got the worst migraine in the entire world, and you definitely don't remember what happened after you passed out. All you know is that someone is sitting on the bed stroking your hair. It feels nice. It's comforting, relaxing... calming after a day of hell. You wonder how long you've actually been passed out. You briefly hear a door open, and realize you're on a bed somewhere. Where was the last place you went?

You keep on thinking for a little while and hear murmurs. You don't really understand them, but the person stroking your hair stops and begins to speak.

"No, man, he's been out like a light for hours. I don't know what we're going to do unless you want me to carry him bridal style ironically, or something. This shit is way too serious, and we need to get out of here now." Sounds like a guy. Sounds like Strider. God, you hope it isn't Strider. You really don't like him, and you often wonder why you refer to him as one of your close friends, but then again you've all known each other since you were about four. You, Strider, Kanaya, Sollux, Aradia, and Jade. Everyone else that you know you've met from either middle school, or high school.

"I know, but how? There are zombies wandering around out there, and we only have you and your crowbar, Karkat's bat, and basically just our fists and feet. Not all of us can fight and not all of us are even capable to go out there." You hear a voice that makes you think of Aradia because it sounds feminine, "Roxy, Jade, and Nepeta are still emotional over what... happened. Especially Roxy... I think it was obvious she liked Jake, and Jane was her best friend. Now they're both dead."

You feel movement on the bed, and you think someone may have flinched? You sure would've. You want to open your eyes now, but you can barely move. Why? You don't fucking know. Why the hell would you know? That's the problem. You don't. So, you just deal with it for now. You guess it might be because right now you keep going in and out of consciousness? Perhaps. Maybe not, but really we're getting off-topic and you've missed half of this conversation.

"--st don't want him to get hurt, and have to witness anymore of this. He's like a fucking cat, Aradia, a scared cat. He has claws and he can use them, he has teeth and he's not afraid to bite, but here's the problem. He's OVERLY-brave. He's just reckless. Knowing him he'd rather risk HIS life for one of ours." You hear a twinge of annoyance in his voice which is odd because Strider usually likes to keep his voice monotone.

"Dave..." Aradia begins to say, but he cuts her off.

"No, don't you 'Dave...' me, Aradia! You of all people should know just exactly why I don't want him to end up like..." He stops and you feel a little wave of air hit your face as if someone waved their arms in your direction frantically, "This! Not again. It's obvious the deaths and just EVERYTHING got to him!" You hear momentary silence, and then the weight on the bed is suddenly gone and you hear quiet murmurs of 'I know, Dave... I'm so sorry...' You would be blinking a lot right now if you understood their conversation. Were they talking about you? No. You doubt it. Why would they? This is stupid. Your mind needs to stop thinking those stupid thoughts. Right. Now.

What thoughts? No thoughts. I see no thoughts here. You don't think there were ever any thoughts here. And if there ever were any thoughts here in the first place they wouldn’t be yours because you have never had any thoughts like these and you never will. So, don’t bother asking what thoughts you’re having because you’ll refuse to tell... yourself? Yeah, you have no fucking clue why you just thought all that up. That was ridiculous. There’s no one in your head, but yourself so... you’re either really just that tired, or the zombies are really getting you to talk to yourself.

You wonder if the others realize you’re awake, but they don’t and they just stopped talking altogether. You still know they’re there though you can hear their quiet breathing, and it makes you wonder why they are in here and what exactly you’re doing in here. You really don’t remember what happened before. You think momentarily back on what happened, but then you get a splitting headache the moment you do try to remember something. You hear someone step a bit closer to you. You can feel their presence near you and you try not to let it show on your face.

You’re pretty sure your face showed something like pain in response to the sudden splitting headache from trying to remember. It doesn’t help that you’re probably going to get another migraine again and you just know it. You then feel a hand on your head, and hear hushed murmurs of reassurance. It’s quite soothing and you can feel yourself slip back into unconsciousness.

When you wake up again it’s from cold air being blown against your face, and the little pinpricks of snow hitting your face. You briefly wonder what time it is, but instead decide to open your eyes to find out exactly what’s going on and where you are. You realize by the bouncing view in front of you that you’re being carried by someone. You would huff, but you’re so tired and cold right now that you just stay quiet, but you can’t help the shuddering breath that you let out from sudden shivers.

Whoever is carrying you notices because your head is most definitely on their shoulder and you just feel like hitting whoever this is in the face somehow. “So.... the Kittycat has finally woken up.” Scratch that. You want to claw the fuck out of this person’s face. And this person is the worst person that you could ever get a piggyback ride from. You hiss quietly and he laughs, “Wow, you really are like a cat. Don’t claw me alright?”

“Shut the fuck up, Strider.” Your voice is hoarse as you hear yourself whisper that, and soon after grumble about how fucking stupid it is to be getting a piggyback at this age, especially when it’s from someone you don’t like. You grip one hand around his neck more when he pretends to drop you almost getting a scream out of you, you can tell he’s laughing because you can feel it, but you can’t hear it.

“I won’t drop you I’m not that much of a jerk, _gog_.” You hold yourself back from strangling him as he brings up that typo your phone made when you were ranting at him. It was only that one time where your phones auto-correct decided to spazz the fuck out, and he is still holding it against you. You don’t even know why he of all people are giving you a piggyback ride and when you wipe the sleep out of your eyes with your other hand you see the others far up ahead. It seems he’s walking slowly.

Wait. Why did they all decide to leave without your permission who was the wise guy to think of this while you were unconscious? You make a mental note to lecture the small, yet still pretty big group you have about leaving in the middle of the night when zombies could pop up at every corner.

You wearily look around, and Strider seems to know exactly what you’re thinking, “It’s four in the morning dude, and we all left an hour ago. We’ve been walking around incredibly slow, we had to run a few times when we ran into a few clusters of undead, and did you know that you are one of the most deepest sleepers ever?”

You nonchalantly roll your eyes and huff, “What you all couldn’t wake me up to leave? Just thought it was a fine idea to just up and go fuck off to the land of no return. Whatever, as long as we haven’t left anyone behind,” You realize that you’re both whispering for some reason and you hear the sounds of the night, and the slight breeze that is blowing freezes you to the bone.

“Are you cold, Karcrab?”

“No, not at all, it’s just four in the morning you know as we walk around in January, in the fucking cold. With it snowing.”

“Good because I wasn’t about to offer up my coat.”

You huff for the second time in only just a few minutes. You realize you have your backpack on, and your father’s baseball bat is sticking out of it. You make a mental note to check if Trollian still works even though you doubt it probably won’t. Plus, there isn’t really a need to. You don’t know who you’re missing, then you hear a loud _Ding!_ notification and you then hear after that a few muttered curses as Dave nearly DOES drop you this time as he gets his phone out of his pocket.

You glance over his shoulder at his phone to see him texting someone named Dirk by the looks of it; you don’t even bother to bring it up, and he doesn’t make any move of telling you who it is. As if you cared anyways. Although, you won’t lie you’re a bit curious, but decide to get rid of that curiosity right the fuck out the window of I-forgot-to-care-about-this-shit.

“Why are you giving me a piggyback ride?” You finally bring up.

“One, it’s ironic,” You nearly choke him this time on purpose, “Two,” He coughs quietly as you loosen your grip on his neck with your arms, “No one else could, or wanted to. That and they knew if they dropped you they’d have to deal with your never ending rage, whereas I don’t really give a fuck about your rage because it’s hilarious to see a shorty rant on and on.”

Hissing you flail around to be put down, and to make a point he does drop you slightly, but then makes a note of helping you up, “Fuck you.” Is all you say as you stand up and wipe the dirt off of yourself.

“Maybe later.” Dave says making you punch him in the arm as you feel your face flush for some ungodly reason. Probably embarrassment. You don’t really know, but all you do know is that you walk fast to catch up a bit to the others. He still manages to keep right on your heels.

“Oh c’mon, Rant-ass, no need to start a hissy fit,” You hear him start and you whirl around on your heels, and push him.

“Do *NOT* call me that.”

“Or what?” He’s smirking as you scowl.

“Or I’ll feed you to them.” You hiss pointing at one of the zombies that’s up ahead, and you vaguely see Vriska from the corner of your eye bash the things head in with something. It’s too dark for you to see with your horrible vision anyways. Plus, it doesn’t help that the fluorescent lights aren’t on. Yeah, they hurt your eyes, but it still is nice to have a little light at this time of day. The moonlight doesn’t really help in your opinion.

“Ouch,” You look back to see him grab his chest where his heart is, “I’m hurt. Such a cruel thing to say.” You hear a mock of pain in his voice as you just shake your head turning around to walk away towards the group again.

You both walk in silence as you have now caught up to where you’re just behind the group again as you can at least hear a few of their whispers. You don’t know what anyone would have to talk about anymore what with the world turning to shit. Not like it wasn’t already shit in the first place... “Where are we?” You finally bring up as Strider turns his head over at you and shrugs casually.

“Near the park? Somewhere? I don’t know I think we may have passed your house, but god knows where the hell we truly are. We just had to get out of the dorms.”

“Why?” You ask quietly; intrigued on what happened when you were out of commission.

“Well, ever since you decided to pass the fuck out scaring everyone half to death we had been waiting for everyone to get their shit together. I was composed the entire time, and we ran into some other people there.” You raise a brow about to speak again, but he immediately hushes you, “They decided that we were too in the way, and let the stupid fuckers in, and screwed everyone over. Whilst we all regrouped immediately we had to split up to break away from the zombies. The imbeciles, by the way the people that were in the dorm not our own derps, decided to stay behind. God knows why I could care less, dunno if they made it,” He shrugs to make his point and continues you, “Aradia got you, Vriska lead Terezi, Jade, and John out as Nepeta and Roxy followed after them. Then you, Aradia, and I, us three, were sorta left behind momentarily, and we met at the back of the school walls. That fuckin’ place was a wreck. Total disaster.”

You blink a few times trying to imagine this, but give up after a while feeling glad that you missed out on those few hours of hell. You step closer to the sidewalk avoiding the zombies that are double dead from whoever else passed through here, and the ones that are alive and groaning. You see a street sign, but it’s too dark to read, but you have a feeling you’re in the outskirts of town. What you need to know is if you’re going North, South, East, or West. The park would’ve been North-west of Gold Obsidian that posh rich-looking private school.

You’re both silent, listening to the mumbles and quiet conversations of your friends that are ahead of you both as you two walk behind them. John and Vriska are leading the front of the small group, and you and Strider are taking up the back... kind of. You’re both walking slowly at the back of the group a few steps away from them all. And then you see Nepeta and Jade fall short a few paces and soon enough they’re walking back with you two.

“Karkitty,” Nepeta begins to say something to you only to be cut off by a quiet ‘beep beep meow,’ and you notably flip Dave the bird as you hear Jade sigh, and Nepeta even giggles as you and Dave begin to bicker.

“Listen Strider, why don’t you just get your stupid ass right the fuck up to the front of the group with John.”

“Because we both know you like my stupid ass too much for it to go hang out with John right now especially since Vriska wouldn’t like the company of my booty.” You realize Dave’s currently trying to make a statement, “Anyways, my ass isn’t stupid it is absolutely perfect and you love it and you know you want it.” You hold yourself back from punching the smirk right of his god forsaken face.

“I would rather die an excruciatingly painful death of being torn apart and eaten alive than want your ass, and no it is far from perfect. Fuck you.” Finishing that you cross your arms only to get another snide remark from him.

“Now, now, one does not simply fuck out of nowhere, who do you think I am? Some whore?”

“Yes.”

“Ouch, that’s cold, now you have to buy my dinner first, and I demand we go to the best restaurant that isn’t filled to the brim with zombies, Rose will be our chef, Jade will be the manager, Aradia will kill anything that tries to eat us because we are not food--” You stop listening to his idiotic voice once he says that John is the waiter. You’ve had enough bullshit for one day. And after a few minutes you decide maybe you should listen in again...

“--Karkitten we’ll live in a high-class mansion--” Okay, scratch that, that was a stupid idea he’s still going with this, “--nd you aren’t listening. You are the worst waifu ever.”

“I am not your waifu.”

“Don’t lie, you know you are, it is bound to happen, so you mine as well accept it.” He stops, but then starts up again, “You seriously haven’t changed since middle school you’re still so full of sunshine and ponies that it makes my heart want to burst from joy at our pleasant conversations.”

“I’m going to kick you if you don’t fucking stop your sorry excuse for a voice to stop saying all these goddamn words that no one really cares to listen in about, so please do us all a favor and forget you have vocal cords Strider.”

“Ouch,” He starts up for the thousandth time, “And just when I was about to point out how close we were to the park too. I refuse to forget about my beautiful voice though. You wish you had a voice as perfect as this.”

For some unknown reason you find yourself smiling realizing you are closer to the park, but as you know Strider sees your smile you plainly kick him right in the shin. Why he didn’t move out of the way is beyond you, but you honestly could care less about that right now as you realize Jade and Nepeta both left you two behind a while ago when Dave began that whole take me out for dinner thing.

You hate to admit it, but talking with Dave does seem to pass the time, and taking the abandoned alleys and streets did keep you from a few zombies. In the distance you can see the sun slowly rising as the sky turns a faint pink-yellow-orange; under any other circumstances you would think it was a pretty view, but now all you can think of is getting to the park and passing out under the slide, swing sets, or something else that you all played on when you were children.  
You actually haven’t thought out what you’re going to do once you reach the park, but you know Rose and Kanaya will help you think this through. And anyways, you refuse to spend the whole upcoming day in that park. You rather find some shelter from the outdoors, mainly the cold, and you sure as hell would like a good night’s rest... You hear yourself snort as Dave raises a brow at you. You haven’t gotten a good night’s sleep in years, the bags under your eyes are enough proof.

Enough of this, you think in your head, your trademark scowl on your face as you feel the all too familiar vibration in your pants pocket. Taking out your phone for about the tenth millionth time today you see you’ve gotten a text message from Kanaya and her all too familiar jade text color. It seems by the way she is writing this out that she seems worried; panicked even.

**Kanaya: Karkat It Would Seem We Have A Slight Problem**

**Kanaya: And I Assume You Are Quite Busy Right Now So Ill Make This Quick**

**Kanaya: When I Say Slight I Mean The Park Is A Bad Choice And We Lost Someone Along The Way Yet Gained More People Reply To This As Soon As You Can We Need A New Rendezvous**

Her texts end there and by the time it says they were sent this was sent at least an hour or so ago. You wonder why the texts are getting sent much slower, but there are obvious reasons for that, sooner or later you won’t have any way to contact someone that is out of hearing range, but that’s not for at least a few more months depending on how well defended those sorts of things are. Which you honestly think protecting something like the internet and signals for cell phones is pretty fucking important.

You realize you have zoned out as you also realize that you’ve come to a halt in walking, and then suddenly your phone is out of your hands and you blink looking around. And then there’s Dave and he’s waving, no taunting you by waving your cell phone in front of your face. You frown more if that’s even possible by now, most people close to your age by now like John, for example, have dimples, while you on the other hand most likely have frown lines. Are frown lines even a thing? Screw it. They’re a thing to you now. They are the best damn thing in the whole god forsaken world.

You’re now jumping, yes jumping, as Dave holds the cell phone above his head to a point where you just barely cannot reach as he backs up in the direction of your friends that are now actually a good few yards ahead of you. They’re all probably done with your slow bullshit, but then it hits you that you MUST reply to Kanaya now, and get a rendezvous as soon as possible before you all get yourself lead into a death trap. If Kanaya says there’s a problem with it you will honestly believe it.  
“Dave just fucking stop you cocksucker and give me my goddamned phone back!”

“Aww Karkitty’s angry again isn’t that just cute. Now what could be so important on this phone that’s got you so riled up?” Strider is now walking ahead of you at a fast pace as if this were a casual morning stroll for the fucker. You’re caught up with him in seconds trying to snatch the phone from his grip. And then the asshole has the nerve to reply to Kanaya himself!

“Give that back you fuckmunch! I don’t need you going through my stuff and sending stupid shit to Kanaya! This isn’t some fun game anymore, not saying that it ever was, but for fuck sakes it’s life or death!” You are practically screaming now as you successfully snatch the phone from his hands absconding up close till you are caught up with the others, Dave hot on your trail.

“Yo guys, quit your walking, actually wait don’t, let’s move over off of the street, and somewhere where there isn’t any zombies trying to attack us.”

“Umm... Dave, there are zombies trying to attack us everywhere.”

“Siiiiiiiigh. What is it this time, so-called coolkid?” Everyone is suddenly going on at once, and you just have the worst headache in the world right now, so you decide to let Strider handle them, as you hear him tell them all to hush and let him speak, or he’ll feed us to the zombies himself, or whatever the fuck he’s even saying anymore you’re too busy reading what he sent Kanaya. Although, the messages say they’re still being sent over.

**Karkat: yo kanaya**

**Karkat: hey im talking to you**

**Karkat: goddamn why wont his messages send slowest phone ever my gog**

**Karkat: omg karkat your phone it changed god to gog could this be a sign**

**Karkat: remember the typo karkat its funny because i brought it up earlier**

**Karkat: guess i should get to the point of things so**

**Karkat: we should make the rendezvous somewhere reasonable**

**Karkat: you know jade and jake have that island they go to during the summer i dont see why we cant even go there**

**Karkat: just hijack a boat or some shit sail across the ocean like the sexy beasts we are**

**Karkat: and suddenly the zombies probably would learn how to swim or die trying**

**Karkat: even though theyre already dead**

**Karkat: so technically double dead**

**Karkat: if thats even possible can someone even die twice whatever anyways i gotta make this quick since i have an angry shortstack grabbing for his phone again**

**Karkat: i say we make the rendezvous somewhere near my apartment or my apartment itself**

**Karkat: in case you all forgot my bro collects shitty swords and not my bro but my bro bro**

**Karkat: gogdamn that makes no sense oh look theres gog again and**

Since the texts seem to stop there and they all go through there extremely slow process of sending you assume that’s when you got your phone back. There’s a few words in the writing box, but you have enough sense in you to delete that.

**Karkat: THIS IS PROBABLY THE WORST IDEA I HAVE EVER HEARD IN MY ENTIRE LIFE. AND I WISH SOMEONE COULD ALREADY JUST PUT ME OUT OF MY MISERY, BUT IT SEEMS I’M DOOMED TO LEAD YOU INCOMPETENT SHITHEADS FOR THE REST OF MY DAYS.**

**Karkat: IN OTHER WORDS, I’M THE LEADER, I MAKE THE MEET-UP POINTS, BUT**

**Karkat: IT DOES SEEM LIKE A GOOD IDEA TO GET MORE WEAPONS IF WE CAN UNLESS HIS BRO, WHATEVER ASSHOLE STRIDER HE WAS REFERRING TO THERE , ALREADY TOOK THEM. THEN IT IS A TOTAL FUCKING WASTE OF TIME.**

**Karkat: AND TIME. TIME IS SOMETHING WE DON’T HAVE ANYMORE, AND IT’S SOMETHING WE ALL NEED TO LEARN TO CONSERVE**

**Karkat: IF YOU CAN EVEN GET THESE KANAYA REPLY WHEN YOU CAN I WON’T RUSH YOU IF YOU’RE DEALING WITH THE SAME SHIT I AM, BUT TELL ME WHERE YOU ARE WHEN YOU CAN EVEN REPLY**

“--ettled we’re heading to my apartment.” Wait, what. Fuck no.

“What, no fuck you.” Suddenly all eyes are definitely on you since you have only now decided to speak up.

“Why not karkat, Dave’s apartment is filled with shitty swords!”

“Because Egderp his bro could’ve already ransacked the fuck out of the place and absconded the hell out of there like a sane person would do. Hell, I think most people would do that.” Strider shrugs at this.

“Whatever, bro it’s worth a try honestly.”

“I just don’t want to risk anymore lives.” You look around at them all, but it seems Strider already has them all on his side. So, you just decide to facepalm and glare at every single last one of them.

“Okay, okay! For fucks sake we’ll try okay! Goddamn.”

“Don’t you mean, gogdamn.” You feel the need to punch something.

“Don’t you even fucking start, Strider.”

And with that said he then makes it a point to prove that he is now the one leading that way as you all take a lef-- yeah, no you all freeze in your spots. This. This is why we do not follow Striders. Striders gonna stride, but everyone else? Yeah, fuck no, you are not about to walk down a street that is covered with zombies. Everyone just seems to be frozen, unmoving, as you all take slow quiet steps back, but you all know it’s too late. The zombies that have been slowly following your group behind you all are still quite a bit ways away, but still close enough for you to hear far off moans and groans of the undead.

But, that seems to be enough noise for these fuckers, so the majority of them that were not facing you turn to hear what those slight noises are and what are the odds that you all just happen to be there? It’s the odds that you hear someone scream, “FUCKING RUN, DIPSHITS!” Only to realize that scream ripped through your throat and you are the first to turn the hell around and sprint the fuck away. Honestly, you were beginning to wonder why downtown seemed to be so goddamn deserted, you guess this answers it.  
It’s like a hoard of the fuckers are chasing after you, they may not be all that fast, but they know how to move when they’re in groups. You realize that your own small group is right on your heels, and the first person to pass you is Nepeta shortly behind her is Vriska, and soon off you are in the middle of your group. running, but you all once again have to make a swift turn, there’s no way you can face even the tiniest group of zombies ahead of you when you’ve got at least fifty or so on your ass.

You hear Dave, whom happens to be a little bit behind you, you guess he’s watching everyone’s backs considering he really is the fastest one in your group, and everyone knows that for a fact. Anyways, you hear him yell to you all to take a right, and everyone gladly follows the order and thank god it’s not a fuck up this time. It’s nearly an empty alley, street, thing. You wouldn’t know what to call it because honestly? You are more worried about your life then whether this is some street or some random fucking alley. And you’d like to think your friends would totally agree with you right there.

There’s this really stupid fucking thing with zombies that you absolutely detest, but they ALWAYS seem to come at the worst times possible. How could this be a bad time? Well, you never really felt like describing the weather up until now. One, it is motherfucking freezing out here and none of you want to deal with this in THIS type of weather, who does? No one. You’d guess it is about 10 degrees out here, and it is only 5 A.M. in the goddamn morning according to your phone.

But, then again you still aren’t counting the wind chill. You guess it feels like hell out here you are freezing your ass off, and it is really windy out here out of nowhere. The world despises you; you already knew this since the day you were born an albino. You briefly wonder how bad it is for Kanaya, she has to deal with a bunch of retards just like you except one of them is also Gamzee and you already know how much of a pain in the ass he can be at times. And you really do not think Dave’s apartment is the best rendezvous you should pick somewhere more reasonable, or try to pick somewhere that won’t get people killed on the way.  
You suppose you shouldn’t be thinking about any of this when you have to shove your arm up to cover your eyes from the wind, and decide it’s best to focus on the here and now then the then and later... if there will be a later depending on how you all play the hollow, pathetic game of life.

In front of you is most of your friends, and god damn can they be fast, or can you just be slow? Whoever had the smart idea of even RUNNING in this weather deserves a kick in the face. And this is the part where everything turns to shit in a matter of seconds. You notice from the edge of your eye that Terezi is holding Dave’s hand, you know that asshole who is close to the back of the group? You guess that answers why he’s back there, but you really have no time for thinking because her slipping on black ice causes Dave to lose balance momentarily as he looks back and gets Terezi up and running again. But, for some reason you just have a sick feeling about all this you also notice Vriska who happens to be running the fastest take a swift turn to the left and you all follow. You start realizing everyone is following her, and this is definitely where hell is playing it’s unfortunate hateful role in your lives. Those of you who are too slow (mainly you) and those of you who are fast (mainly her, John, Roxy, Jade, and basically the half of the group that you just found including Aradia...) engage this crazy circle of life, and face your destiny of what awaits you.

This next part definitely plays in slow motion for you as you see two to three zombies come out of nowhere, and then there are a bunch in front of you and you are nearly surrounded from all sides. Dave and Terezi have caught up with you by now, “Just great...” you can already hear Dave under his breath as Terezi just frowns at this. She probably knows what kind of predicament we’re all in at the moment. This is seriously why you cannot have nice things in life. Because then you have those shitty things like being cut off by zombies, “So, any ideas of whether to run down that street over there behind these guys even though it’ll separate us from our group even more, or should we fight them off and die trying to group up?”

You hiss, “The answer is easy numbnuts of course we’re going to be separated even farther from them it is survival of the god damn fittest! We have to fight them either way, so I advise you all to get ready!” And by getting ready you mean to kill them because you’re totally taking that bat and slamming it into a zombie’s skull who thought it’d be nice to bite Terezi. No one is going to touch her. You don’t hear Dave give a reply, if he ever gave one to begin with as he slams his crowbar into the gut of a zombie making it stumble back as he slams it into the head of another. You wince at the blood that is getting everywhere and you find these current events to be absolutely disgusting.

Terezi is finding use of her broken cane again by practically dancing in place. She is cutting them and hitting some of them back, and just literally looking as though she were doing some form of dance. You’re slightly distracted until you snap back into reality when one of those meat puppets practically just about gnaw into your god forsaken shoulder and you are cursing under your breath as you slam the bat as hard as you can at its legs, and then when it’s on the ground you smash it’s head in. The sight is absolutely disgusting and there are parts of the brain oozing out of it’s now smashed skull, and all this blood, and ew you got blood on yourself. You don’t think you’ve ever seen so much blood in your life. You don’t think anyone has.  
You realize after dodging another bite to the arm, and one to the leg, that you should all probably fight in the same direction instead of fighting in three different ways. This is getting you positively nowhere, and the only place you’ll get to by not working together is dead.

“Look out!” You hear Dave yell, and this is when you realize how far you are from the rest of them, he smacks a zombie in the back with his crowbar and his to force it out of that particular spot; he’s obviously helping Terezi, and you’re glad he’s helping her. You wouldn’t ever want her to turn into one of those things, and you guess he wouldn’t either. You can see the shocked expression on Terezi’s face, of course she wouldn’t know if she were about to be eaten or not, she’s blind, fuckass. What more do you expect out of her? She cannot possibly be a badass at this. Even though she could probably kick your ass if she knew where you were exactly. You glance back at them one more time and focus at your own matter at hand here, you can’t be watching them without watching yourself first, you think to yourself as you sidestep a zombie and then backup out of the way only to swoop down on it slamming your baseball bat right down onto its neck... And oh. That’s how Strider knocked that other zombie’s head off with a bat. Apply enough pressure to the tip of the bat to the neck and damn, but ew. It’s on the ground in a matter of time, and you stomp right on its head-- and you think you’re about to throw up. Note to self: Find a new pair of combat boots.  
You stop for a split second to get a breather from all this, you’ve nearly fought your way out of this hoard, but then your breath is caught in your throat while your eyes widen with shock. You think your face retorts to total distress when you watch something play in super slow motion a few feet away from you. You are frozen completely still as time seems to slow down. Terezi is doing her dance over there with her canes, slashing and spinning, spinning and slashing, but her legs are completely unguarded, and that is enough for anyone to know and SEE that fucking TORSO of a zombie slowly crawl up and latch itself onto her leg. And you’ll be damned if she doesn’t shriek and grab Dave’s attention.

We’re both too far to help.

We’re both too shocked to move.

We’re both regretting everything at this exact moment; You and Dave.

She was practically _your_ responsibility, practically _his_ responsibility and just that one shriek that one loud noise is enough to grab every single last one of these bastards attention, and before you even know what’s happening your face breaks with complete rage as you swing your bat around wildly at every one of these fucks that even dares to get close to any part of you. And you can hear your own yell tear itself out of your throat, and you’re screaming her name, but it’s still not loud enough to hear over the groans of these fucking stupid ass things, and you just need to get to her. You need to help her, you have to save her, and-- suddenly something pulls on your arm and you swing yourself around only to come face to face with Dave. You don’t know how the fucker got over to you so fast, but he’s shaking his head at you, and you feel yourself stutter to try and give an excuse to go over to her, they’re all piling over there at her, and you can just HEAR her god damn screaming, and the pain she must be going through. And before you know it you are trying to pull your arm free from Dave’s grip, and you can feel yourself crying, you KNOW you’re crying.  
You can see the frown on Dave’s face and you notice he’s crying too, that was his best bro for Christ’s sake, and then he’s pulling you out of here, and you are both sneakily maneuvering your way through the rest of these asswipes that are on their way towards the screaming painful voice of Terezi. And Dave pulls you around the corner that you wanted to take, and you are thankful for once that the zombies around here are just headed towards the noise and not you for once.

You feel a tightness in your chest, perhaps that’s just the feeling of the love of your life dying, or the fact that she’s going to turn into one of those things? If there’s even enough of her left to turn into one of them... the pain in your chest hurts a lot worse than any wound you could have ever possibly gotten, and you’ve gotten quite a few wounds in your life, and from this. You feel... regretful, guilty, depressed, sad, hell you’re still crying. You both should probably get out of here, but neither of you wants to leave. It’s like if you leave now... then you’re leaving her forever... it’s like you’re letting the fact that she’s gone slip away like nothing. You couldn’t do that. You could never do that. You guess... some people would see this as a one-sided crush or something... but you two were an item once. Two years ago, she has been the love of your life for a while now, and just simply letting her go now just doesn’t seem fair! None of this seems fair nowadays...

None of you are badasses, none of you are heroes, you may be survivors, but none of you asked for this... who would want something like this in the world? You’ve never asked for this... even if your life was shitty before, it’s worse than ever now. You can only hope that it’ll end soon enough, but you know it won’t. Things never go down easily, and it takes a long time to even plan something to help speed up the process of ending this. Was it a virus that turned them into undead? Or, did something simply happen? Whatever the cause you hate it. You’ve never hated something more than you do now, you hate whatever caused this, and you hate these flesh-eating shitheads. You hate them so much that it causes that tightness in your chest to actually hurt now, and you wince a little from it.

But, then you look up and see Dave’s face and for some reason he’s looking off behind you, with a panic-stricken face. You realize, as much as you may hate this, you didn’t really know Dave as well as you do now since this all happened. You just assumed he was some douchebag that stole Terezi from you, but... and then your mind is strewn from that thought process by the fact of how silent everything is. The screaming is gone. The groans and moans of these things is still evident, but... it’s quiet. More quiet than you like, and you think it’s best you both go now. You don’t like this. Not at all.

“Yo... Strider,” Your voice sounds hoarse and scratchy from all that crying, but you continue to speak anyways, “I think we better go, I have a bad feeling about all this...” And hey would you look at that, he actually agrees with you. Well this is a start. Maybe you two will actually become better friends from this emotional experience, but you kind of doubt it.

He simply just nodded his head at your idea, “Pretty sure everyone is headed to my apartment since that was the last place we agreed on, and maybe even the other group will be there?” You shrug and you both quietly begin running down the alley, looking back every now and then to see if any of them from the hoard are following you, but they all seem to be staying back there thank god.

Something hits you, like not literally, not physically, but a saying, like an idea, like something just hit you, and you didn’t realize it until you and Dave were out in the open on another main street. “Shit, Dave, do they even know where you apartment is? I mean, John will probably know since he’s your best friend, but will the others know?” Dave just kind of snorts at that and turns around to give you a look. “These groups of our friends all contain one person that knows where I live, there’s the derps, John and Jade whom both know where I live, then there’s Rose my step-sister so of course she’s going to know, and then there’s my own bro, Dirk, and obviously he knows where he even lives.”

“Wait... Rose is your step-sister?”

“Yeah, parents got married and all that good shit, and then they all up and divorced like hell broke loose, Rose said it was her mother’s fault. Her mother is an alcoholic like Roxy. In which means, Roxy is also my step-sister and also knows where the apartment is. Plus, she’s good friends with Dirk, so it’s not a big deal anyways.”

“Oh.” And that’s all you can really say, and you both just go back to that awkward silence once more as you both start going your own ways. Not your own ways as means of separating, but you both have to watch out for these zombies. And you’re basically following Dave anyways so it’s no big deal. He seems to know his way around this part of town anyways, so there’s no objections from you with him leading.

You’re both doing your own things, Dave sees a zombie in his way, he kills it, you see a zombie in your way, and you sorta just hide. You’re too tired to fight, and the way Dave is fighting some of these zombies you’d say the same goes for him too. You wonder if the internet connection still works like a charm, or if that also went to shit along with all the other things used to communicate in the world. You should all probably find walkie talkies and just hand them out to everyone, or the one that is really leading a group. That seems smart. Just get about four or so walkie talkies and you’re all set.  
That’s... probably a good idea actually, and you decide you’ll have to go to the store somewhere in the town later and get them. But, then that’s the con about trying to get some, the stores are all probably ransacked and possibly filled with zombies, and you rather not risk anymore lives. You’ve had enough death to last you a lifetime.

The wind is starting to pick up, and you think that you all will possibly have another blizzard tonight, and by another blizzard you mean the one right before the zombie apocalypse was enough to keep you all in warm clothing this whole time. It’s not extremely cold like negative fifteen degrees, but it’s still below thirty degrees making it still hella cold out. You honestly never liked the cold to begin with since you’ve always been a summer person. You guess that’s pretty ironic considering all the nicknames you get with the word ‘crab’ in it. Considering you and your father always head down to the beach every summer to go crabbing. Too ironic. It’s little things like that, that will make you want to scream and shout and try to get things to go your way in wishing this stuff never even happened. You think you’re going to end up giving yourself a heart attack with all this stress. You feel as though the whole world is on your shoulders, and you’ve certainly had enough of it.

You sigh.

You really need to calm down. You’re too stressed and you have such a nasty temper. You wish you weren’t so prone to anger like most people. You’re just that short-tempered. And the fact that you’re so headstrong just makes everything worse. You are just too prideful and too stubborn to give in to just about anything. A break is nice every once in a while, but other than that you like to be in total control of what you’re going to do, and what you’re doing. You wanted to be a leader, but... you’re just so bad at it. You’re a good leader, but you’re a bad one. How does that work? Well... you lead everyone well enough, it’s just the fact that... it’s because you’re leading that people are ending up killed, hurt, or one of... them.

You shudder not only from the wind, but from these thoughts that you’re having, you guess you really are this depressed, and there’s no way to help that. Being depressed is going to obviously keep you down, but the thing about life, is no matter how much you are pushed down, pulled down, or even slammed down... You have to get back up on your feet. And you must keep going. You’ve learned this over the years because you’re a stubborn asshole, and no matter how much teasing, bullying, or fighting you went through with those pricks at school, you always got right back up on your feet, and dealt with it. This is one of the stupid ass features you have with yourself, but it’s acceptable.

It’s good to be stubborn sometimes with things like this, you’re depressed, absolutely stressed, and you hate what is happening around you in every single way, but you’re just going to keep trying. And you’ll keep trying until you’re brought down for the final time and you can’t handle it. But... you can handle it. And you’ll try, you frown. Your thoughts are absolutely stupid. God just what you need, your own mind giving you idiotic fucking thoughts like this, but... you can’t help but smile a tiny bit.

Even though... the love of your life is practically gone now... and you don’t know what’s happening to your best friends, and you’re stuck with the king of all ironic douchebags... it’s... okay. You guess. You are not okay with everything that has just happened, but you can’t dwell on the past. The more you stay on the past... the more you’ll just get weaker, and if that happens you’ll just want to give up right here and now. You of all people cannot give up. You may be the shittiest leader in all of the god damn existence of shitty leaders, but god help you, you do NOT give up. You may appoint someone else as leader, and you may do all this crazy shit, but if you weren’t here, then what would your friends do? They wouldn’t do anything! They’d all probably be dead right about now without you!

You snicker, earning a glance from Strider since it’s all silent around this part of town besides the noise of your feet, and your breathing. (Not to mention the howling wind. You are definitely going to have a horrid snowstorm on your hands later. You can just taste it.)

“What’s got you in a sudden great mood, Crabbycat?” He inquires trying to figure out why you’re snickering to yourself.

“Nothing, I just realized a few things is all.” You reply as casually as you could put it, “And anyways why the fuck does the rendezvous even have to be your apartment?”

“Oh my god, are we really going to have to go over that again? Just deal with it bro, everyone’s already agreed to it.” You huff, and realize he is smirking now. Eh, it’s best you get everyone in a good mood, you suppose. That, or they can all go fuck themselves you’ve just had enough of this depressing shit... You just... don’t want to think about your father... or... you know... Just, you’re forgetting it for now! You’ll grieve when it’s the proper time to grieve, but right now you’ve got matters that need to be taken care of!

“So, vile smelling doucheking, we’re just going to crash out at your apartment, and just wait for the others to get there?”

He shrugs, “Pretty much, they all know where to go, and I don’t wanna get my ass killed trying to find them all, and anyways as long as I have this annoying bug of a Kat with me to talk to and joke at, then I’m set for a while.” You roll your eyes, and scowl.

“But--”

“C’mon it’s this way.” Strider was already ahead of you, but he doesn’t need to take turns so swiftly Jesus.

“Hey douchebag, slow down!” You yell breathlessly as you try to catch up with him, the wind always made it hard for you to breathe, especially when it’s blowing against you and at your face, and suddenly you’re in another alley, and the fucker is already halfway down it. Groaning you begin to run again, until you’re sorta caught up with him. How does this fucker move so fast?

“I don’t think I need to slow down, you just gotta speed up. Gotta go fast, Kitkat.” If you had a dollar for every time he used a horrible meme you’d be rich. It’s probably the other way around for him, like every time you scowl, or do something you always do he’d get a dollar. Man, neither of you would be rich or poor. You’d practically be giving the same dollar to each other back and forth and god that is just dumb.

“Yeah, no, either you slow the fuck down, or I just go and search for the other asshats already.” You huff and cross your arms, but you still find yourself following after him anyways. You wouldn’t even know where to begin to search for the others. They could be a block away, or a few miles away, they could be right behind you, or halfway across the damn town. They could be here, or there and you wouldn’t even know. And Strider, the dumb prickish idiot, knows that you don’t know where they are. And you’re scowling again. When aren’t you scowling?

You think if he actually took off those god forsaken shades more and looked you in the eye then you have this hunch he’d just roll his eyes at you, but then again that isn’t very ‘cool’ is it. You snort. Yeah, coolkid your ass, talk about the unironic uncoolest douchebag king of all dorks and hipsters. And ugh, don’t even get you started on those hipsters. Don’t forget the derps, oh god, this is just gonna make you wanna hit someone. They’re all so aggravating.

“Well, if you’re that ready to go give yourself up as bait, go right ahead bro, but I’ll be over here in my warm apartment, covered in blankets and pillows, karkatless as I sit there, most likely fallin’ asleep, drinkin’ my hella good AJ wondering whatever happened to that coolcat? We’ll never know...” He stopped talking for a second, “Well, actually there are only a few options to run on, and they all involve you dying, so I guess we do know what happens to catfish.” You could already see the smug look on his face, and catfish? What the shit? You don’t even want to know where he even thinks of all these shitty pet names, or nicknames, or whatever the hell you call them.

“Look, Strider,” You begin as you speed walk up to him, and jab him in the arm with your finger, “I’m not that weak, or defenseless, and no way in hell am I going to die, so how about you cut the crap, and just hurry up and get us to your god forsaken apartment.” He rubs his arm in the spot that you jabbed him in and says something along the lines of ‘fine, fine you impatient peasant.’

Not much happens on your way to Strider’s apartment, sure you see a few undead, but you both sneak by them with ease, you aren’t going to kill any of them unless you absolutely need to, like if you were cornered, of fucking course you would kill them then. Only an idiot wouldn’t. An idiot with a death wish.

You can only hope that it’ll be this easy to regroup with the others, but you aren’t exactly sure just how much hope you all have left to hang on by. You’re guessing hope has dwindled down to its last thread, and your group, or well _groups_ are hanging on for dear life.

It’s all you can do now. Is hope. It’s all you can really do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another thing....
> 
> When using spell-check, look at what it wants you to change some words to because omfg
> 
> karkallas? UNMOLEST?!
> 
> JFC SPELL-CHECK WHAT ARE YOU IMPLYING THERE, HM????
> 
>  
> 
> alsowhendidthisstorygetsopopularmygod.notthatidontenjoythat.iluguys,500hits+! wow! :'D
> 
> also, gonna be completely honest, i didn't know where to end this chapter because it really did just keep going on and if i didn't stop there i wouldn't be able to stop anywhere else >> ((alsosorryforrandomupd8andthennochapter,ikindafailedatthatbecauseiclickedpostwithoutpreviewinsteadofpreviewitself, OTL))

**Author's Note:**

> THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A ONE-SHOT....  
> .........BUT..........As you can see I ended up with it being.... well.... YEAHHH....
> 
> Let's just.......... *stops typing*
> 
> ((Also sorry about the random 1st person, 2nd, 3rd, whatever changes in my typing, at the time i couldn't stick to one, and i hafta go back and search high and low to find them all and fix 'em, so I'm still working on that. P:  
> I'm also kinda....new to ao3 soooo *dies*))


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